Holabird Advocate

Providing all the news we see fit to print since 2002!

Friday, May 25, 2007

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT DEATHSubmitted by Mavis KennedyDeath is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death! Make a personal reflection about this. Very interesting, read until the end. It is written in the Bible (Galatians 6:7): "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Here are some men and women who mocked God:JOHN LENNON: Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said: "Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain. Jesus was OK, but his subjects were too simple, today we are more famous than Him" (1966). Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.. TANCREDO NEVES (President of Brazil ): During the Presidential campaign,he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency. Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being made President, then he died.CAZUZA (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet): During a show in Canecïo ( Rio de Janeiro ), whilst smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: "God, that's for you." He died at the age of 32 of AIDS in a horrible manner.THE MAN WHO BUILT THE TITANIC: After the construction of the Titanic, a Reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be. With an ironic tone he said: "Not even God can sink it" The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic.MARILYN MONROE: She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her. After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said: "I don't need your Jesus". A week later, she was found dead in her apartment.BON SCOTT: The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang: "Don't stop me, I'm going down all the way, down the highway to hell". On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit.CAMPINAS/SP IN 2005: In Campinas, Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend. The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter -holding her hand, who was already seated in the car: "MY DAUGHTER, GO WITH GOD AND MAY HE PROTECT YOU." She responded: "ONLY IF HE (GOD) TRAVELS IN THE TRUNK, CAUSE INSIDE HERE IT'S ALREADY FULL".. Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died, the car could not be recognized of what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact. The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none were broken.Christine Hewitt: A Jamaican Journalist and entertainer, said the Word of God was the worst book ever written, in June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle.Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus. Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive. JESUS!!!Why Are The Bees Disappearing?by Doug, of the Straight Dope staffI'm an entomologist with the University of California at Riverside. Here's a summary.First and most important: There are some 20,000 species of bees in the world, and many thousands more types of pollinating insects. What you're hearing about, "colony collapse disorder," affects one species of bee – the European honey bee. That species happens to be the one global agriculture relies upon for about 30% of its pollination requirements. So while we're not talking about losing all the world's pollinators, we are talking about losing a significant fraction of them. That's the worst-case scenario, with the species wiped out completely.Second, there's no reason at this point to think European honey bees are going to be wiped out, now or ever. The die-offs so far appear to affect some beekeepers more than others, sometimes in the same area. That's one reason scientists are so puzzled, but it strongly suggests the losses may have something to do with how individual beekeepers are managing their bees. The "significant percentage" of failing hives is still a drop in the bucket when viewed against the global population of honey bees, and there are lots of beekeepers (even in the U.S., which appears hardest hit) who have not had, and may never have, significant losses of colonies. Plenty of honey bees remain to replace the ones that have died. It's not yet time to scream that the sky is falling.Third, it's almost impossible to get hard numbers on how many colonies have died recently, and how much of the current uproar is media hype based on guesses, estimates and anecdotal accounts from the handful of beekeepers who have had the most colony losses. If you talk to other beekeepers, most admit they have colonies die off every winter, but they don't always keep records on how many. A lot of the reports we're hearing are based on personal recollection rather than careful documentation. In other words, the scary figures you're hearing could be exaggerated. Fourth, even the original report describing and naming the phenomenon explicitly says it's something that has been seen before (repeatedly), named before, and studied before – in all cases without coming to any conclusion about the cause. The researchers didn't like the older names for the syndrome (which usually included the word "disease," which has connotations about infectiousness that don't seem applicable here), so they renamed it colony collapse disorder. That point has largely eluded the press, with the result that most people think this is a new phenomenon, when in fact the researchers who described it note reports of similar die-offs dating back to the 1890s.Fifth, if what we're seeing is indeed a recurrence of a century-old phenomenon, that's a pretty good argument against theories of causation involving things that haven't been around that long. Yes, it's an assumption that current and past die-offs have a common underlying cause. Some researchers don't accept that assumption – they're the ones proposing things like pesticides as possible causes, and they may yet prove to be correct, since some modern pesticides can indeed kill honey bee colonies in a manner consistent with the present symptoms. But the leading hypothesis in many researcher's minds is that colonies are dying primarily because of stress. Stress means something different to a honey bee colony than to a human, but the basic idea isn't all that alien: If a colony is infected with a fungus, or has mites, or has pesticides in its honey, or is overheated, or is undernourished, or is losing workers due to spraying, or any other such thing, then the colony is experiencing stress. Stress in turn can cause behavioral changes that exacerbate the problem and lead to worse ones like immune system failure. Colony stress has existed, in various forms and with various causes, as long as mankind has kept honey bees, so it could indeed have happened in the 1890s. Many modern developments like pesticides or mite infestations can also cause stress (in fact, many of the things theorized to be involved can cause stress, so it's possible multiple factors are contributing to the problem, not just one). Unfortunately, stress is difficult to quantify and control experimentally, so it may never be possible to prove scientifically that colony stress explains all this year's deaths.Sixth, it's never a good idea to trust what the media are telling you. At least once in the present case the media got something completely wrong and created a huge mess: The story about cell phones was basically a misrepresentation of what one pair of reporters wrote about a study that they misinterpreted. In a nutshell, the original research didn't involve cell phones, and the researchers never said their research was related to honey bee colony die-offs. Even details like the alleged Einstein quote are dubious. No one has yet found proof that Einstein said anything about bees dying off – the earliest documented appearance of the "quote" is 1994 and, yes, Albert was dead at the time.The bottom line? No one is certain what's going on, but a lot of the theories can't – by themselves – explain everything we're seeing. More important, the situation hasn't yet risen to the level of a catastrophe (except, sadly, for some of the affected beekeepers). If the same thing keeps happening every winter for another decade or so, then we might really start worrying. But for now, classifying this as a "problem with potentially severe economic impact should it persist" would be a more realistic assessment.